


sorry baby xoxo

by anythingbutplatonic



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Angst, Day 2: Criminals, Gore, If you haven't seen season 2 of Killing Eve then MAJOR SPOILERS, Killing Eve AU, LOTS of violence, M/M, Mild description of castration, Robron Week 2020, Semi-Graphic Descriptions of Murder, The Killing Eve AU nobody asked for, Villanelle!Robert, When a spy and an assassin fall in love, psychopathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24146008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: Robron Week Day 2: Criminal“I didn’t ask if it was legal, I asked if it could be done.”Intense romance, sexual tension, and emotional whiplash abound as a secret agent and the assassin infatuated with him head for a deadly collision course…The Robron Killing Eve AU that nobody asked for.
Relationships: Aaron Dingle/Robert Sugden
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	sorry baby xoxo

Aaron’s lungs screamed, his hoarse gasps for air making his whole chest heave. He leaned back against the hot stone wall of the alley, bent double, gagging at the scent of blood on his clothes and the image pressed against the front of his mind; Ivan, the agent sent by the Twelve to find them, slumped in a shiny marble-floored corridor with an axe buried in his skull, an axe put there by Aaron.

“ _Come on, Aaron, you can do it…just kill him. Come on! Hit him! Kill him! He’s dangerous, you know you have to. C’mon, Aaron, do it!”_

THWACK.

The sound of an axe hitting brains and bone and blood spraying, coating them both in a fine mist of red, blood on Aaron’s hands, blood on the bottoms of Robert’s shoes, and the feverish look in Robert’s startling sea-green eyes when he’d made the final swing…

_“You did it,” he’d whispered, taking Aaron’s face in large hands and cradling it, his palms warm and soft. “You did it, Aaron, you did it. You protected us. I’m so proud of you, I’ve taught you so well.”_

A hysterical laugh broke from his chest; he couldn’t quite believe the situation he’d found himself in. Running from MI6, running from the Twelve, running from everything with a psychopathic assassin who thought he was Aaron’s boyfriend and chased him halfway across the world through a series of extravagant kills designed purely to get the attention of the object of his infatuation.

For God’s sake, he’d chopped Frank Clayton’s knob off just to get his attention, though not before wrapping a rope around his throat and pulling tight enough to asphyxiate him instantly. 

They’d found the poor bloke stark naked, sans penis, spread out like a starfish with his wrists tied to the bedposts in a run-down hotel in Leeds. His eyes had still been open. 

Aaron had waited years for a secret admirer - had longed, privately, for affection and attention, for someone to _want_ him warts and all - and here one was, in the form of a tall, long-limbed, _elegant_ , strikingly handsome killer for hire who got under Aaron’s skin and made his nerves dance to a tune that was entirely their own. 

Pressing a hand to his chest, above his racing heart, he forced himself to calm down. He was in an alley densely packed with people; shops on both sides had their doors thrown open, welcoming customers as well as letting in some air to escape the oppressive heat. He was in Rome, the most romantic city in the world - or was that Paris? He could never remember - and here he was, choking on panicky breaths because he’d been coached through his very first murder by an assassin who made his skin feel like it was on fire and made Aaron question everything he ever thought he knew about so many things, it made his head spin.

Robert Sugden was an enigma. A powerful one. He was fascinating from a psychological viewpoint, likeable as much as he was repulsive, and Aaron couldn’t. Stop. Thinking. About. Him.

He appeared in Aaron’s dreams. He felt warm lips on his jawline and soft hands caressing his waist. In his dreams, he smelled Scotch whiskey swallowed neat out of the bottle and the heady aroma of the best leather jackets money could buy. He saw shiny shoes and a coif of blond hair that shone red in the sunlight, and a husky voice on his voicemail saying _I missed today. Did you miss me?_

His phone buzzed in his pocket, making him jump; he fumbled for it with shaking hands, slippery with sweat and tacky, drying blood, and when he saw that the number was withheld his stomach dropped.

But he put it to his ear regardless, a magnetic pull deep in his gut compelling him to answer the person on the other end of the line. Inevitable. Like how someone with an axe in their head was surely about to die.

“You really shouldn’t run off like that,” Robert said, his voice soft and smooth and rich. Full of concern. “It’s very rude, actually, given that I just saved your life and you just killed someone for the first time.”

Aaron didn’t reply. He swallowed, hard, around a dry throat and the scent of blood still clinging to his nostrils. 

“It’s okay to be scared,” he continued, softly, so softly. “But I can help you. I can help you, Aaron, if only you’d just let me. Let me _in_. I know you feel what I feel, so just - _let me in.”_

_“No!”_ Aaron barked, loud and coarse, teeth gritting. A passerby jumped and stared, but he ignored them. “I don’t need any help from you, we are _not_ what you think we are. You’re _insane_.”

Robert laughed - a loud, high-pitched, ringing laugh that could have meant any number of things at once. “You’re in denial. You don’t know that you feel the way you do for me, just like I feel the way I do for you.” His voice lowered to a whisper, a plead. “I love you.”

“You don’t,” Aaron protested, shaking his head firmly though he knew Robert couldn’t see him, “you can’t. You’re a psychopath. You can’t feel anything, you _don’t_ feel anything.”

“I do,” Robert beseeched, and Aaron could almost picture the way his handsome face had crumpled, feline features distorted in the pain he couldn’t feel but convinced himself he did, just to feel human. Normal. “I do love you. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone before but - you. You make me feel things. I don’t feel things that I should but I know that when I think of you….when I see your face and your eyes and imagine your hands touching me….I love you.”

Aaron let his eyes squeeze shut, fighting against every inch of his skin that burned with fire brought on by the desire of Robert’s words, his voice, the way he could see the earnestness in the eyes that reminded Aaron of a scared child as much as the hard flint of someone trained to kill.

He remembered gentle hands stroking through his hair as they sat opposite each other on the silk sheets of the queen-sized bed in Robert’s flat, soft fingertips brushing his lips and a fascination with the planes and muscles of his body that Aaron had never felt before, not with any romantic partner. 

He’d never known such passion and intensity before he’d started hunting down the assassin who changed voices and lives as often as Aaron washed his socks, but always, _always_ there was a yearning within him for _more_. 

He knew Robert spoke six languages, was learning a seventh - Mandarin - but had yet to fully grasp it. He knew that he was a posh twat who had a hundred different suits in eye-watering colours and patterns and every time they met he was wearing a completely different one. His favourite colour was green. He’d once sent Aaron a thick cashmere scarf in sapphire blue wrapped in gold-leaf paper with a card that said _I love your eyes. Wear this and I’ll be able to spot you in any crowd, anywhere._

He had. It was warm, and comfortingly soft, and a few days later a bouquet of roses had shown up at his flat, this time with a box of the best chocolates Aaron had ever tasted. 

_See?_ The card accompanying them had read. _You can enjoy the finer things in life, too, you know. It won’t kill you_.

“I don’t love you,” Aaron forced the words out, his hands and voice shaking. “I can’t. I don’t. Whatever you think this is - it’s all in your head. Like everything else in your life, it’s just a fairytale. What you think you want, yeah? It’s not real.”

“ _Shut up!”_ Robert yelled, voice roughening with anger. “Shut up, Aaron, just - shut up!”

“It’s true, and you know it,” Aaron said, as coldly and calmly as he could manage. He had to. He had to convince him it was fake, that none of this was real life, or -

_Or he’d never come back from admitting what he really felt._

_“_ You’re a psychopath,” Aaron continued, clutching the phone so tightly in his hand his knuckles ached. “You have a problem, yeah, you have a real problem and - I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I can’t _help_ you with that, I’m sorry.”

Why was he apologizing? He wasn’t the villain, here. But like magnets with the same poles forced together, the thought repelled him like a punch; it pushed him back, said _No, no, no_. He didn’t believe it even as he was saying it. But he had to. 

“I’m not who you want me to be, Robert. I can’t be that person for you,” he said. The crowds kept milling past, but everything around him had faded out of existence. He didn’t see the sun shining on stone walls, the shadows cast by the awnings of shops, the chatter of all kinds of languages around him - the sing-song of Italian girls, gesticulating Frenchmen, a Spanish guitarist on a street corner serenading passers-by. Nothing but him, and Robert, and the deadly pull between them he couldn’t shake off no matter what he did or how much distance he tried to put between them.

“Stop it,” Robert said, his voice tight. “You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean.”

“I do,” Aaron whispered. “I do mean it.”

“You _don’t_!” Robert insisted. “You don’t Aaron, you don’t and - it’s _them_ , don’t you see? It’s them, they’ve poisoned you against me. But we’re the same, aren’t we? It’s you and me against the world, Aaron. Just like I told you that day, do you remember?”

_Lying side by side on soft cotton sheets and silk pillows, so close they could feel each other’s breath on their faces. Aaron could see every tiny freckle on Robert’s face, a kaleidoscope of stars on his skin making nonsensical patterns he desperately wanted to understand. Robert’s lashes soft against his cheeks, blinking up at him doe-eyed like a starstruck child. The warmth coming from his chest and the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. Their hands so close they could almost link them together._

_“I remember,”_ Aaron whispered, and something caught his throat as hard as if a fist had been placed around it. “I remember it, I remember everything.”

“You stabbed me in the gut that day,” Robert said, his voice neutral, deflated. Empty.

“I know,” Aaron replied. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” came Robert’s quiet voice on the other end of the phone. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

He didn’t see the red light, glaring against the backdrop of his white shirt.

He didn’t see the barrel of the gun.

He just heard the bang, and the screaming, and his phone dropping from his hand and onto the ground in a clatter as he collapsed, blood pulsating from his chest turning the flagstones red. 

It was only then that he felt the pain, so much pain, a thick black fog of agony that choked him down as he drifted up and away, away from Rome, away from Robert.

Away from everything.


End file.
